Yuliy Mamchur

Yuliy Mamchur (15 August 1971-) was a colonel of the Ukrainian Air Force and a People's Deputy of Ukraine from 27 November 2014. He was most famous for his heroic defiance of the Russian Army at Belbek during the Crimean Crisis preceding the Ukrainian Civil War.

Biography
Yuliy Mamchur was born on 15 August 1971 in Uman, Cherkassy, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union (present-day Ukraine). He graduated from the Chernhiv flight school in 1991 and served 9 years in Zhytomyr before being transferred to Uman. In 2013 he was appointed commander of the Sevastopol brigade of tactical aviation of the Air Command of the Southern Operational Command of the Ukrainian Air Force, rising to Colonel.

On 3 March 2014, Mamchur faced a crisis when the Russian Army invaded the Crimea and surrounded the Belbek airbase, giving him an ultimatum to surrender. As the men of the Ukrainian 62nd Fighter Aviation Regiment under Mamchur approached the Russian troops, the Russians fired warning shots, the first shots of the Ukrainian Civil War. The defiant Mamchur told the Russian troops that it was his duty to safeguard the Constitution of Ukraine by defending the base, so the Russian troops eventually withdrew. However, despite repeated requests, the Ukrainian government sent no assistance to him. Crimean separatists cut the brakes in his family car and demanded his execution for treachery, as he became a bastion of resistance to Russian imperialism and was called a hero in the West. On 23 March 2014, twenty days later, Russian regular troops overran his base. It was the last stronghold to fall, and Mamchur told his men to resist non-violently and sing the Ukrainian national anthem. He was arrested and released after three days of intense psychological pressure, and during this time, he was kept awake by the unmarked Russian troops, who attempted to persuade him to serve in the Russian army and commit treason against Ukraine. On 29 March, he was relocated to Mykolaiv with his unit and his family, and Russia gave him 150 of his planes back, but only the ones that were discarded as useless. 38% of his subdivision left Crimea, with only 200 men left. On 27 November 2014, as a member of the social democratic Petro Poroshenko Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko, Mamchur was elected to the Verkhovna Rada as a People's Deputy of Ukraine.